[Solved+Issue] Drag & drop images linked: how to embed?

[Hagar Delest]

When using drag & drop to add an image to a slide, larger images automatically get linked while smaller seem to get included.
How can i change that ?
I want all images included, is there an option to include linked images or something ?
Otherwise i would have to re-add and re-arrange quite a few images ...

[squenson]

What do you mean by large images: images that are bigger than the slide, or images that are large files? Also, which format of images are you using (gif, jpg, png, ...)? Last question, which OS and version of OOo do you use?

[acknak]

Hmm, I'm surprized that size would be the determining factor.

I wonder if it may have to do with where the images are dragged from: drag an image file from the file manager or desktop and you get a link to the file. Drag an image that's already loaded in another application, and you get a copy.

That's just a guess.

It would help if we knew what system you're using, what applications you're dragging from, or what OOo version you're using. Have you read the Forum Survival Guide?

[fireba11]

okay, so some more details:

OS: winXP

dragged from explorer, i also noticed that
insert > picture > from file
gives the same results.

the images i took are from digital camera, so > 1 MB and in original size bigger than my slide, yes

[JohnV]

Drag & Drop links the picture to it source file. You can then embed the picture with Edit > Links > Break Link.

[fireba11]

working ..

but this is far from being intuitive ^^

[Phil]

i also noticed that
insert > picture > from file
gives the same results.

Yes, but not if you disable the link checkbox in the import dialog. Then the image is embedded.

but this is far from being intuitive ^^

Full ACK!!
I would even go a step further: It is confusing.
OOo Writer behaves exactly the other way: Here Drag&Drop does embed the image instead of creating a link. I never understood why this difference in behavior is there.

But - there's more to come, as I just found out in a couple of tests:

If I Drag&Drop an image in Impress, and I embed the picture afterwards in the way JohnV has described, than the image is saved in the sort that the resulting file size can increase dramatically. In my case it happened with an JPG photograph which was compressed (716 KB).
Embedding it via insert > picture > from file (with the link checkbox disabled) leads to an .odp file with size of 767 KB. Embedding it by Drag&Drop and then breaking the link leads to an .odp file with size of 4,106 KB!
By renaming the .odp files to .zip (one of the greatest advantages of the ODF file formats - they are just ZIP files!!) you can see what happened: The file was converted to a PNG file which is considerably larger than compressed .jpg.
Does someone have an idea why this is happening?
I searched for issues on that with no success.

BR, phil

[acknak]

Yep. I see that also. Very odd.

The only bug report I could find is this: Issue 60661: Impress converts jpg images to png resulting in big files and slow performance. It was marked as "WORKSFORME" a long time ago. I would suggest filing a new report, with the simpler procedure you described and an attached sample JPEG.

The conversion may be done for efficiency reasons. I wonder if it is faster to display a PNG image than a JPEG?

[Phil]

Coming back to that old one...

The only bug report I could find is this: Issue 60661

In fact, issue #15508 (which is referred to in #60661) IMO exactly describes the problem.
So it is a good idea to vote for it!

The conversion may be done for efficiency reasons. I wonder if it is faster to display a PNG image than a JPEG?

Could be the case, yes! However, PNG images should not be that much bigger in size (factor of 6!). And also, why are they only converted if the link is broken?

So this is really odd, but I think we cannot do more than voting for the issue...

KR, phil

[johnlim]

I had similar problem and run the Sun Minimizer tool on the problem file, and am now able to see all the pictures instead of just links. So it seems the size of the pictures trigger off this problem. Each of my picture was at least 2.5mb, and had about 15 photos.

By the way, another problem i noticed was that the size and quantity of the photos seem to also cause Impress to crash occasionally triggering the report problem wizard to show up. For example when i get into slide sorter mode, Impress crash on a few occasions as it is painting the thumbnails of each slide. I now suspect it is related to the first problem.